What if part of Huntington's disease wasn't just damage, but a circuit stuck in the wrong pattern? Our new paper, out today in Nature, tests that idea.
Takaki Komiyama
@takakikomiyama.bsky.social
UCSD professor of neurobiology and neurosciences
Our new paper is out in Nature, congrats to Sonja et al.! An excellent collab with Irina Dudanova's group. We promoted neuroplasticity to improve behavior in a mouse model of a neurodegenerative disease. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Restoring cortical disinhibition improves Huntington’s disease phenotypes - Nature
In a mouse model of Huntington’s disease, targeted modulation of neuronal activity restores network function and improves motor deficits.
nature.com
Our new paper is out in Current Biology! We learn many things in parallel, and brain circuits are constantly rewiring across brain areas. It is notoriously difficult to understand which rewiring events are responsible for which type of learning. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
Local plasticity underlies the reorganization of cortical circuit dynamics during motor learning
During learning, neural circuits reorganize to encode new information and adapt behavioral responses. Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaM…
sciencedirect.com
Our new paper is out in Neuron! www.cell.com/neuron/fullt... How does the brain decide how much of the past to use when making decisions? In rapidly changing environments, recent experiences matter more; in stable environments, longer histories are useful.
Adaptive reorganization of history encoding in the retrosplenial cortex supports flexible decision-making strategies
Zhang et al. show that mice flexibly adjust how past experiences guide choices in fast- and slow-changing environments. Retrosplenial cortex neurons display a wide range of history-integration timesca...
cell.com
Our new work is out in Science Advances. We show that neural activity in the striatum reflects not just cortical inputs, but also often-underappreciated thalamic inputs. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Complementary cortical and thalamic contributions to cell type–specific striatal activity dynamics during movement
Cell type–specific striatal activity during movement is shaped by cortical and thalamic inputs with complementary roles.
science.org
Come see me at my Special Lecture on cortical circuits for learned movements, Monday morning at 10:30AM. #Sfn2025
Will you be at #SfN25? Don’t miss these lectures: 📍Sun 11/16 3pm: The Neural Code of Speech (Edward Chang, KIFN) 📍Mon 11/17 10:30am: Motor Cortex Circuits for Learned Movements (Takaki Komiyama, KIBM) 📍Tue 11/18 5:30pm: Neuronal Aging & Cognitive Decline (Rusty Gage, KIBM) #KavliNeuro
A new @nature.com study from Simons Collaboration on the Global Brain investigator @takakikomiyama.bsky.social finds that as mice learn a complex movement, the pathway from the motor thalamus to the motor cortex rewires itself to drive the movement: www.simonsfoundation.org/2025/08/11/h... #science
How a Tiny Brain Region Helps You Learn Complex Movements, One Neuron at a Time
How a Tiny Brain Region Helps You Learn Complex Movements, One Neuron at a Time on Simons Foundation
simonsfoundation.org
Our new paper is out in Science. We identified a subgroup of cholinergic neurons that mediate sensory modality-specific attention. They change their funcitonal properties within secs of behavioral context change. Congrats to Bin for the great thesis, and the team! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Cholinergic feedback for modality- and context-specific modulation of sensory representations
The brain’s ability to prioritize sensory information is crucial for adaptive behavior, yet its mechanisms remain unclear. We investigated basal forebrain cholinergic neurons modulating olfactory bulb...
science.org
In June 2001, I arrived in SFO with a suitcase, a student visa, and disproportionate dreams. My life since has been nothing but a dream. My heart is with the international students in the US today.
Our paper is out in Nature. By examining various inputs to the motor cortex during learning, we found that thalamic inputs learn to activate the cortical neurons encoding the movement being learned. Tour de force by Assaf in collab with Felix and Marcus. Congrats! www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Motor learning refines thalamic influence on motor cortex - Nature
Imaging and optogenetics in mice provide insight into the interplay between the primary motor cortex and the motor thalamus during learning, showing that thalamic inputs have a key role in the executi...
nature.com
A very thoughtful Perspective on our recent paper by Ayelén Groisman and Johannes Letzkus. Thank you! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Dendritic arbors structure memories
Synapses on different dendritic domains store distinct types of information
science.org
Our new paper is out in Science. What is the synaptic plasticity rule in the brain, we asked. It turns out there are multiple, even within individual neurons. Congrats Jake! www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Distinct synaptic plasticity rules operate across dendritic compartments in vivo during learning
Synaptic plasticity underlies learning by modifying specific synaptic inputs to reshape neural activity and behavior. However, the rules governing which synapses will undergo different forms of plasti...
science.org
How do different cortical neuron types contribute to circuit dysfunction in #Huntington’s disease? Check out our new collaborative study with @takakikomiyama.bsky.social, spearheaded by Sonja Blumenstock, now out as a preprint. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Optogenetic restoration of neuron subtype-specific cortical activity ameliorates motor deficits in Huntington′s Disease mice
Huntington′s disease (HD) is a devastating movement disorder without a current cure. Although the monogenic basis of HD is well-defined, the complex downstream effects that underlie behavioral symptom...
biorxiv.org
Our new paper shows that targeted stimulation of a subtype of cortical inhibitory neurons can ameliorate motor deficits in Huntington’s disease mice. A great collab with @irinadudanova.bsky.social www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Optogenetic restoration of neuron subtype-specific cortical activity ameliorates motor deficits in Huntington′s Disease mice
Huntington′s disease (HD) is a devastating movement disorder without a current cure. Although the monogenic basis of HD is well-defined, the complex downstream effects that underlie behavioral symptom...
biorxiv.org
663 days since the senseless tragedy that took An, we present a manuscript that reports some of the discoveries that she left us. www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1...
Targeted stimulation of motor cortex neural ensembles drives learned movements
During the execution of learned motor skills, the neural population in the layer 2/3 (L2/3) of the primary motor cortex (M1) expresses a reproducible spatiotemporal activity pattern. It is debated whe...
biorxiv.org
IMO one of the most exciting studies I’ve seen recently. Trial-level unmasking of memory-specific functional connectivity www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Intermittent rate coding and cue-specific ensembles support working memory - Nature
By recording large populations of neurons in behaving monkeys using newly developed silicon probes, we show that intermittent periods of memorandum-specific spiking coexist with synaptic mechanis...
nature.com
Our new paper out in Science Advances. A population code in the retrosplenial cortex explains the discrepancy between animal behavior and standard RL models. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
Our new paper out in @NatureNeuro. We uncovered the roles of orbitofrontal cortex in distinct aspects of meta-reinforcement learning. www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Meta-reinforcement learning via orbitofrontal cortex - Nature Neuroscience
The authors show that neural activity and synaptic plasticity in the orbitofrontal cortex mediate multiple timescales of reinforcement learning (RL) for meta-RL, which parallels a form of meta-RL in a...
nature.com
PSA to SfN attendees— the metro now goes between Dulles and downtown DC
Our recent collab paper. Reanalysis of our previous data from a functional connectome perspective identified hub neurons that remain the center of functional reorganization during learning. Congrats Saber, Rudi et al.! www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Rewiring Dynamics of Functional Connectomes during Motor-Skill Learning
The brain’s functional connectome continually rewires throughout an organism’s life. In this study, we sought to elucidate the operational principles of such rewiring in mouse primary motor cortex...
tandfonline.com
Excited to be speaking at this SfN satellite meeting on Saturday evening mbns.bruker.com/acton/fs/blo...
mbns.bruker.com
Wrote a little intro to the BICCN package that just dropped: www.science.org/doi/full/10....
Science | AAAS
science.org
Our recent collab paper-- an attempt at spike estimation from calcium imaging data with temporal superresolution (i.e. faster than the frame rate), congrats to Pulak and Piya: ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/doc...
Please smack me if I become a billionaire and start acting like Elon Musk.